


you'd be the love of my life

by melsandre



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/F, babies in college, drunk moping, emily likes to be all self-sacrificing for no reason, jj wants to smack emily for being an idiot sometimes, resolving angst because im nice, they're both just total simps for each other honestly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27811420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melsandre/pseuds/melsandre
Summary: au where they actually went to undergrad together and for the purpose of simplicity i am imagining they both went to undergrad at georgetown (which is where jj actually went to graduate school). in the first chapter of this fic, emily has already graduated and is at yale, while jj is still finishing at georgetown.based upon the song 21 by gracie abrams.
Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	you'd be the love of my life

**Author's Note:**

> Italics denote flashbacks. The flashbacks are generally all detached from each other and are just snippets without a concrete timeline. Chapter 2 will follow their reunion at the BAU.

It was her birthday. Jennifer. 

It was her birthday and Emily knew this because they had spent two brisk Novembers drifting among half-drunk college students and pressed against each other within the confines of her studio apartment. Now, three shots in, Emily felt untethered, on the verge of being unhinged. Emptiness sucked at her lungs. It was the sense of deep aloneness that came with missing Jennifer Jareau, who was mile after inaccessible mile away. A painful aloneness that stuck Emily where she was, paralyzing her in a state of regret and wanting. She was blurry-eyed and floaty and trying not to let herself fall into the sadness Emily knew would come with thinking about Jennifer. Thinking about how she was turning twenty one tonight, thinking about the liquor-soaked smile that was probably pulling at her lips. 

_ Jennifer giggled drunkenly, hair sticking out messily around her face, eyes wavering. Something burned brightly in her chest and Emily rushed forward, kissing her clumsily. She tasted of the margaritas they had mixed and promptly downed forty minutes earlier, liquor and lime juice still painted across her lips.  _

Emily sighed heavily—there would be no avoiding that specific, excruciating kind of reminiscing. It was evenings like this that made every single reason for their break up scatter to the farthest four corners of the earth, flung impossibly high until they shrank into nothing. Every cell in her body cried out for JJ and the desperate missing turned her into some defective excuse for a human being. One with a singular, hurtful focus. Her ex-girlfriend had a nasty habit of consuming every inch of her brain, of keeping Emily awake at night and leaving her restlessly absorbed in her memories. 

She knew Jennifer would be out right now and most certainly not despairing over Emily. She would be drinking and laughing (a silvery thing) and stumbling carelessly (adorably) through streets marred with a bunch of other twenty-somethings, all just as intoxicated as her. If Emily were with her, she might have been drunkenly fixated on her mouth or the flush across her cheeks or whatever bright, sweet thing she was saying. 

_ “Em-uh-lee,” JJ strung her name out tipsily, “Come here.”  _

_ Her arms were flung out wide, a bottle of Merlot grasped tightly in one hand. Emily smiled shyly and crawled across the couch toward her, burrowing into her arms. She could feel the way Jennifer lit up once they made contact, immediately twining her right arm warmly around her waist, slipping beneath her shirt. Emily sighed contentedly against JJ, pressing her lips to the delicate lines of her collarbone. She felt a hand trace up the shape of her spine with gentle fingers and snuggled closer to her girlfriend.  _

_ “I think,” Emily mumbled, wine-loosened and utterly relaxed, “I think I might be in love with you.”  _

_ The other woman froze for just an instant before hastily placing the bottle on the table beside them and gathering Emily further into her arms.  _

_ “I love you too.”  _

Emily flopped back onto her bed and let the silence swallow her whole. Living by herself was at times unbearably quiet and the quiet only made the hurt inside of her pulse more intensely. It threatened to rip itself out of her through the tears that pulled painfully at the back of her eyes and the thickness that swelled in her throat. She felt, fuzzily, as though she was being cracked right in half. 

Yale felt hardly worth the loss of the one person who made her feel sane and safe, though her mother would have killed her had she made any other choice. Not that it was a choice, really. She would readily admit to her own ambition, but more importantly, she had a mandated responsibility to not do anything her mother would consider as throwing her life away and giving up on her graduate degree to stay with the woman she loved was, to the Ambassador, throwing her life away. Even this path of criminal justice was one her mother felt less appropriate than that of a politician or politically inclined socialite. She had always projected dreams and aspirations and expectations onto Emily to a suffocating degree, always tried to involve her in her political manipulations and self-important social life. It was honestly a miracle that her mother had remained relatively calm the first time she had caught Emily tucked down a hallway at some vastly boring gala with another girl pressed between herself and the wall. That was the thing though, Elizabeth Prentiss never flailed, never faltered, and only ever admonished Emily in a disturbingly settled tone. It was always thinly veiled disappointment and never anger, which sometimes felt worse. Disappointment that Emily might come close to jeopardizing their reputation, disappointment that she found politics distasteful and found the life her mother led to be trivial rather than ambitious, disappointment that Emily would choose anything over political prominence. 

Jennifer had always joked that she would never fit in with the life Emily was supposed to live, but Emily would argue that JJ was more suited for it than she herself was. The younger woman had a natural inclination to put others at ease, to speak to them exactly how they needed. She was stunning and effortlessly sweet but unmistakably calculated and ambitious. Not that it mattered, though, because any potential they had for a life together had entirely dissipated. Her fingers itched to pick up her phone, so she clenched her comforter in her fist. Emily knew too acutely that it was not her place to reach out, to force herself back into the space that Jennifer occupied, not when she had been responsible for the dissolution of their relationship, one that had been beautiful and healing and warm. 

Emily watched as the clock on her dresser counted down the minutes to the closing of the night. The driftiness of her semi-drunken state made sleep even more enticing, and then she would be freed from the grasp JJ had on her while she was awake. She pulled herself out of bed to strip down and shut the lights off before abandoning her phone on her bedside table and snuggling deeply beneath her covers, completely and sorely alone. 

*

“Jayje.” 

Jennifer blinked slowly, eyes caught on the mint sprig that had floated to the top of her glass. It was her birthday and she was supposed to be happy, supposed to be unabashedly and chaotically drunk. Instead, she was thinking about her ex-girlfriend. Emily might have broken up with her, but she lived (achingly, vibrantly) inside her head just the same, had never left. Emily was still categorically the love of her life and JJ was unsure that that would ever change. She had been so sure that they were meant for each other, so sure that Emily was her person. She had once mentioned that Emily made her feel like she was on fire, lit aflame by the aliveness she felt when she was with her. Now, in her absence, she felt an incessant dimness. 

“Jayje, seriously.” 

An exasperated, “what,” slipped past her lips and she raised her head from where she had been focused on her drink. As the memory-logged haze that Jennifer had been engrossed in faded away, the messy sounds of the bar around them inched back into her ears. It was some utterly random place that Lena had picked, the first in their long list of birthday excursions. 

“You gotta stop thinking about her,” Audrey raised a pointed eyebrow in her direction. 

JJ rolled her eyes, tipping the rest of her drink back.

“It is your birthday,” Audrey said, drawing out the syllables, “You cannot still be sulking over the woman who broke up with you seven months ago. Not tonight. You can go back to moping tomorrow, but I swear to god JJ—”

“Fine,” she snapped. 

_ Emily had been staring at her weirdly for the past five minutes, apprehension strung tightly and visibly across her shoulders. JJ had been preoccupied with trying to stuff all of the books in their apartment into their respective boxes with some semblance of order but had stopped once she had felt eyes on her.  _

_ “Em, what the fuck is wrong?”  _

_ The brunette shook her head a little too forcefully. Jennifer watched as Emily tamped down whatever it was she was thinking, could practically see her digging a little hole to bury it in.  _

_ JJ sighed, “Baby, come on.”  _

_ Emily swallowed thickly, eyes big and regretful, “We have to break up.”  _

_ Well, that came out of nowhere.  _

_ “What the fuck?”  _

_ “We have to—” _

_ JJ glared at her, “Are you insane?”  _

_ Maybe it was a premature reaction, but what Emily had suggested had completely thrown her. They were happy. Enviably happy. She felt something drop inside her chest.  _

_ “Jennifer,” Emily pleaded.  _

_ “Why?”  _

_ “Because—” _

_ JJ huffed angrily, “I swear if you tell me you’re doing this for my own good.”  _

_ “I—” The words Emily meant to say fell off her lips because that had been precisely what she was going to say. And it was true. Jennifer had things to do, had impressive ambition and a career that she wanted more than anything, and Emily was certain she would only get in her way.  _

Lena tapped her on the shoulder, “Wanna go to the next one?”

JJ nodded gratefully. There was something about this place that made her feel stuck and a little broken inside. Without Emily, she felt like she was drifting aimlessly—strung out and two mishaps away from breaking down. This was how it had been since Emily had left, everything just a little tenser, a little harsher, and a little sadder. Remembering Emily and the disintegration of their relationship made her want, just a little bit, to scream. 

She welcomed the change in atmosphere as they stepped out into the street, the cold air jolting her a bit further out of the headspace she had dug herself into. Jennifer watched her shadow slink along the edge of the sidewalk, flickering in the cracked yellow streetlights and the messy half-light that spilled from windows. Audrey looped an arm loosely through one of her own, guiding her gently along as the rest of their friends wove behind them. 

They were wonderful girls, all of them, and JJ was grateful for their presence in her life. She wished to seem more appreciative of everything they had done for her tonight and every past night spent heartbrokenly drooped over herself. It was then that she resolved not to think about Emily for the rest of the night, as it would only deepen her sadness. The love she felt for the other woman still beat so sharply in her chest and it was something she doubted would lessen over time. JJ just hoped that the alcohol-induced fog of the evening would soften and quiet it, that the loud happiness of her friends would cover it up. 

In a final moment of thought, before she let it all go for the evening, Jennifer could not help but to speculate whether she and Emily would ever meet again. Whether Emily might ever acknowledge the mistake that she had made, might call her again out of some desperate need to hear her voice, might curl back up with JJ at the end of the night, one hand possessively held at the curve of her waist. 

She smiled softly to herself at the possibility. The anxious tendril twisted between her ribs loosened itself and something hopeful danced up the plane of her chest. 

Maybe. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on Twitter @aiexbiakes and buy me a coffee if you're feeling nice because I really am a college student just trying their best: https://ko-fi.com/alexblakes <3


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